


Together

by purplestarfish



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 17:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20213221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplestarfish/pseuds/purplestarfish
Summary: Demons – and angels, for that matter – did experience love and lust, whatever the stories might have told you. Animals in general did, really. It was hardly something humans had a monopoly over the way they seemed to think they did.Sex was one of the easiest entry points to convincing a human to turn to a life of evil and temptation.Crowley had never liked doing things the easy way.





	Together

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it!
> 
> I absolutely love Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship, and I love the idea that it doesn't need to be sexual in order to be meaningful. (Or romantic, though in this particular fic I've written it as romantic.) I also think it's important to show that Crowley and Aziraphale aren't aro and/or ace just because they're ethereal beings - those orientations are perfectly human, too, and demons can feel just as alienated by their sexuality as the rest of us. :)

Demons – and angels, for that matter – did experience love and lust, whatever the stories might have told you. Animals in general did, really. It was hardly something humans had a monopoly over the way they seemed to think they did.

Angels were beings made entirely out of love. They lived it, breathed it, _felt _it for everyone and everything they encountered. If anyone could be said to have a monopoly over love, it was them.

Demons liked to think they were immune to love, but Crowley had seen a fair number of them split off into twos and threes as well, sometimes even going so far as to share a corporation for a few hundred years at a time. And as demons dealt in temptation, lust was practically their bread and butter. Sex, after all, was one of the easiest entry points to convincing a human to turn to a life of evil and temptation.

Crowley had never liked doing things the easy way. It bored him.

And he’d certainly never been interested in matters of the flesh for his own sake. Human corporations – whether they contained a human, witch, occult or ethereal being – were rather. . . well, perhaps they were just too _good _for him. Whatever it was, he had no interest in sex, and he didn’t intend to take part in it.

It wasn’t until after Armageddon that his distaste for sex began to matter. Before that, it had been entirely irrelevant. After all, he and Aziraphale were on opposite sides, and even if they’d _wanted_ to they couldn’t have gotten too close without Heaven and Hell getting involved in a truly unpleasant sort of way. Their “Arrangement” and occasional meetings were pushing their luck as it was.

Now, though, they had a chance. Or they would have had a chance, if Crowley had wanted sex. They weren’t on anyone’s side now, only their own, and while Heaven and Hell could decide to have another go at them anytime now, Crowley knew that Aziraphale had succumbed to temptation and ensured a peek into Agnes Nutter’s second book before Anathema burned it. It seemed, at least for the foreseeable future, that they were safe.

They could be together.

But not _together_, not the way Crowley wished they could be. Not the way he was confident Aziraphale had thought about a time or two himself.

Because Crowley didn’t want what came along with that. Couldn’t be tempted. And as much as Crowley was the demon, between the two of them, Aziraphale had always been the first to give into temptation.

\---

“I was wondering if you’d care to have dinner with me?” Aziraphale asked over the phone, about a week after they’d eaten together at the Ritz. And really, how could Crowley say no to that?

“Name the time, angel,” he replied easily. “I’ll give you a lift.”

“Actually,” Aziraphale started, and Crowley was pretty sure he heard a small stutter in his voice. “I was wondering if you might like to come by the bookshop for dinner? I thought I might miracle something up for us.”

_Interesting._ Crowley’s pupils contracted as he squinted in thought. He’d known Aziraphale for a good long while now, and they’d eaten together on countless occasions, but he was fairly certain Aziraphale had never cooked for him before. Not that using miracles to create edible food was strictly speaking cooking, of course, but even so.

“Whatever you say, angel,” he drawled finally, because he needed something to say, and he’d always felt he could pull off a suave sort of carelessness that covered up the seriousness with which he agreed to anything Aziraphale ever asked.

“Lovely,” Aziraphale replied. “I’ll see you at 7:00 sharp. I’ll be making linguine vongole, so if you would be so kind as to bring a suitable wine pairing, I’d be ever so grateful.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and merely grunted before hanging up. Then he grabbed his jacket and left to find someone he could tempt into shoplifting from a liquor store for him.

\---

It was 6:45. Despite what you may have heard, Crowley was perfectly capable of arriving early. He had lived through the days of “fashionably early” and into the days of “fashionably late,” and he had come to the conclusion that if you wanted to be somewhere, waiting for what was deemed socially acceptable was a waste of your Someone-damned time.

He sauntered into the bookshop, casually twirling a bottle of Pinot Grigio between his hands. Walking towards the back, he heard the voice of Lou Reed singing “I’m Waiting for the Man” coming from Aziraphale’s kitchen. Intrigued, he raised an eyebrow and followed the sound to find Aziraphale. . . cooking. 

Of the non-miraculous variety.

“Should I be worried?” he asked, eyebrow still raised. “You haven’t been possessed, have you?”

Aziraphale startled at his voice and turned around, fixing his waist coat and blushing. It definitely looked like him.

“Oh, my, sorry,” Aziraphale stuttered. “I simply lost track of time. Here, let me just miracle some of this away. . .” And the pots and pans that surrounded the kitchen were gone, replaced by two steaming bowls of pasta on the counter.

“Do you_ cook_?” Crowley asked, incredulous. Perhaps he almost sneered it – if so, Aziraphale was certainly used to it from him.

“No, no,” Aziraphale said distractedly. “I was just. . . trying something new. I see you brought wine.”

Crowley had been a demon long enough to know when someone was changing the subject, but he chose to have mercy on Aziraphale.

“One of your favourites,” he nodded, offering Aziraphale the bottle. “Though I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

“Well, thank you all the same,” Aziraphale said, taking the wine and turning to find a bottle opener. He poured them each a glass and set one on the table for himself, handing the other to Crowley. He then returned to the counter to pick up the two bowls of linguine. “Please, sit,” he said, gesturing towards the table.

That was when Crowley noticed the candles. There were two on the table, long, thick ones, that smelled of tree nuts, the kind used in Japan more than 2000 years ago. The table was also set with an elegant tablecloth and true silverware, and the soft notes of the Velvet Underground continued to play in the background.

And Aziraphale had been cooking when he’d walked in. With a stove and everything.

Crowley downed the glass of Pinot Grigio in one gulp and poured himself another. He should have had that kid shoplift him more than the one bottle.

“Angel,” he asked, after he’d taken a couple of calming breaths. “What exactly is going on here?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, using his fork and knife to move his food around on his plate. “I had just thought – since Armageddon is over and everything – and given that we’re no longer bound by any particular sides – perhaps we didn’t need to run away to Alpha Centauri to be together anymore.”

Crowley’s breath caught in his throat. _Alpha Centauri?_

“I . . . would you have?” he ventured.

“Would I have what?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley closed his eyes behind his sunglasses. “Would you have. . . run away with me?” After a few seconds, Aziraphale hadn’t answered, so Crowley opened his eyes again.

Aziraphale opened his mouth once, twice, but no words came out. Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

“Of course,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley wanted to cry.

“Are you . . . are we . . . when you say _together_. . . ?”

At this, Aziraphale blushed.

“Well, darling, I know we’ve never quite said it – we couldn’t risk it, of course, not knowing what Hell might do to you if they found out about us – but I thought, now that we can do more or less as we please, we might as well make it official.”

Crowley wasn’t just going to cry, he was going to discorporate.

All thoughts of _suave_ vanished from his mind, and it was all he could do to croak, “Make. . . what . . . official. . . exactly?”

Aziraphale reached over to wrap his hand around Crowley’s. It felt warm, like it glowed with the love Aziraphale exuded everywhere he went.

“Us,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley couldn’t deal with this, so he extricated his hand from Aziraphale’s grip and grabbed his fork, twirling a large bite of pasta and cramming it in his mouth indelicately. If his mouth was full, he didn’t have to talk.

He ate, staring down at his plate, for several long minutes. He felt Aziraphale’s gaze burning a hole in the top of his head, but he didn’t look up. Aziraphale let him go on, and given how long it seemed to take to get through his bowl, he wouldn’t be surprised if Aziraphale had miracled some extra linguine into his plate along the way to give him time to think.

Aziraphale was good like that. Patient. Something Crowley never had been.

When Crowley was finally ready to look up, he blurted the first thing that came to his mind:

“I love you.”

Aziraphale had always had a certain glow about him, but the way he glowed as he smiled in that moment felt different. He lit up the room.

“My dear, I love you too.”

Crowley gulped. He’d wanted to say that – _needed_ to – but there were other things he should have said first. Problems.

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” he said. The way it came out made him cringe – he’d been going for confident, but it had sounded arrogant, almost, crude – but at least he had said it.

Now Aziraphale would understand why they couldn’t be _together_. Not like that, anyway. Why they were best friends, bound together for all eternity, but destined, doomed to be kept at arm’s length.

Because angels were love, and demons were meant to be lust, and all he had ever felt for Aziraphale was the former.

Aziraphale would understand and they would be best friends for another 6000 years and then 6000 more after that, and that would have to be enough.

Crowley didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes again until Aziraphale spoke, directly into his ear. When had he moved?

“Crowley. Neither do I,” Aziraphale whispered, and Crowley stopped breathing.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t want to have sex with you either, my dear,” Aziraphale said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. Except that Crowley could hear the faint tremor in his voice – they were both putting on airs, they both knew it, and yet putting on airs was so deeply ingrained in each of them from years of needing to appear to be mortal enemies that they’d probably never stop.

“Why not?” Crowley asked, taking off his sunglasses and staring into Aziraphale’s eyes.

Aziraphale shrugged. “It’s not something that interests me,” he answered. “I’m much more easily tempted by a good book.”

And it really was as simple as that, Crowley realized. Aziraphale wouldn’t lie to him, so he must truly not care. They could have everything Crowley had wished for all these years.

Time meant nothing to either of them – 6000 years of existence will do that to you – but it was still hard to believe they could have been together all this time.

That maybe they _had_ been together all this time, even if neither of them had noticed it.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your books,” he ventured, testing the waters, “so why don’t I bring some of my things over? My houseplants would look perfect among the shelves.”

Aziraphale frowned, as if in thought, then said, “I think they’d look even better in our bedroom, don’t you?”

Crowley nodded. _Our bedroom_, he thought. _That sounds right._

He reached beside him and clasped Aziraphale’s hand. Aziraphale squeezed back, gazing into his eyes from where he was crouched before him on the ground.

Then Aziraphale straightened abruptly, turning on a heel to stalk towards the counter, probably just to make himself look busy.

“I won’t have you yelling at our houseplants, though,” he called sternly.

Well, there were always going to be some things they disagreed on, Crowley supposed. An angel and a demon were bound to have a few incompatibilities.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave kudos if you liked it, and especially leave comments to let me know what you thought! I really do need comments to live and grow. :)


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